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    Blade 7: The Arizona Climax
    Blade 7: The Arizona Climax
    Blade 7: The Arizona Climax
    Ebook180 pages2 hours

    Blade 7: The Arizona Climax

    By Matt Chisholm

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    About this ebook

    Posset was the stranger who held it ... Chavez was the Mexican who worked it ... and Geronimo baptized it with blood.
    Arizona was a wild, forbidding land. The Indians had possessed it since the beginning of time, and they prized their freedom. The white men were newcomers who hungered for gold, silver, cattle and the land itself.
    Apache and white man were natural enemies and the Mexicans were alien to both. So when each claimed the territory, their clash was bloody, violent and disastrous. Joe Blade was in the middle of it all.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPiccadilly
    Release dateDec 31, 2018
    ISBN9780463418703
    Blade 7: The Arizona Climax
    Author

    Matt Chisholm

    Peter Christopher Watts was born in London, England in 1919 and died on Nov. 30, 1983. He was educated in art schools in England, then served with the British Amy in Burma from 1940 to 1946.Peter Watts, the author of more than 150 novels, is better known by his pen names of "Matt Chisholm" and "Cy James". He published his first western novel under the Matt Chisholm name in 1958 (Halfbreed). He began writing the "McAllister" series in 1963 with The Hard Men, and that series ran to 35 novels. He followed that up with the "Storm" series. And used the Cy James name for his "Spur" series.Under his own name, Peter Watts wrote Out of Yesterday, The Long Night Through, and Scream and Shout. He wrote both fiction and nonfiction books, including the very useful nonfiction reference work, A Dictionary of the Old West (Knopf, 1977).

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      Book preview

      Blade 7 - Matt Chisholm

      Posset was the stranger who held it ... Chavez was the Mexican who worked it ... and Geronimo baptized it with blood.

      Arizona was a wild, forbidding land. The Indians had possessed it since the beginning of time, and they prized their freedom. The white men were newcomers who hungered for gold, silver, cattle and the land itself.

      Apache and white man were natural enemies and the Mexicans were alien to both. So when each claimed the territory, their clash was bloody, violent and disastrous. Joe Blade was in the middle of it all.

      Together they made ...

      THE ARIZONA CLIMAX

      BLADE 7: THE ARIZONA CLIMAX

      By Matt Chisholm

      First published by Hamlyn Books in 1980

      Copyright © 1980, 2018 by Matt Chisholm

      First Digital Edition: January 2019

      Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

      This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

      Cover Art by Edward Martin

      Series Editor: Mike Stotter

      Text © Piccadilly Publishing

      Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.

      Chapter One

      His name was Carlton Game. He was a big man and a powerful man. He reckoned that mankind was divided in two those who came running when he crooked his little finger and those that didn’t. He found a great many who did and pretty damn few who didn’t. That was because he was rich money rich, cow rich and land rich.

      He thought he could crook his little finger at Joe Blade. That was about the wrongest thought he ever had.

      Carlton Game’s agent found Blade quietly resting in a little New Mexican town not many hours ride from Santa Fe. Maybe it was the agent who made the big mistake in the first place. He merely told Blade that the great man had a contract for him and it was worth a good deal more than peanuts. As Blade liked to have a pocket full of dollars, and to eat regularly as much as the next man, he got himself to Tucson and knocked on the door of the great man’s palatial residence.

      He found that Carlton Game was a man big enough physically to fit his importance and power. Six-foot-four in his socks and wide enough in proportion. No longer young, but fit as the proverbial fiddle. He had not allowed money, cigars and hard liquor to spoil his shape. Not that he rationed himself on any of those things.

      His manner was not pleasant. When a man owns large parts of several states and has too many cattle to count, he finds that he can dispense with pleasantness. Or so Carlton Game thought.

      He sat behind his massive desk in a room large enough to hold the Democratic convention in, puffed a man-size cigar and looked at Blade as if he were an object which he could buy three times before breakfast without even noticing it.

      ‘Blade,’ he said in those booming fruity tones for which he was famous, ‘I have a job for you.’

      ‘Why me?’ Blade asked. He had his suspicions of the job before it was even mooted.

      The great man looked somewhat affronted by the question. He said, ‘I’ll tell you why you. Because three men have tried it and failed. I’ve heard you’re top of your trade and you don’t ever fail.’

      He seemed to expect some response to the statement, but he didn’t get it. Blade just stood there looking at him with an expressionless face. Blade was six foot tall, lean and hard. To contrast with the deep wind-and-sun tan of his face, his hair was a premature grey. Men said it turned that color when his parents had been killed some twenty years before in his boyhood. Maybe in that moment Game first suspicioned that he had found a man who didn’t give one cent’s worth of damn for his money or his power.

      Game said, ‘Does your silence mean it sounds too much for you if three men have failed?’

      Blade said, ‘It means I’m waiting for you to tell me what three men failed at.’

      Game frowned and knocked the ash from his cigar. The ashtray was as large as a coffee tray and it was made of onyx and gold.

      He said, ‘I don’t much appreciate your tone. Blade.’

      Blade said, ‘You’re not hiring my tone.’

      Game flushed like a sixteen-year-old. Blade watched the blood come into his eyes. He was a man easy to get to because he was used to having his own way.

      Game said, ‘I don’t beat around the bush. I’ll lay it right on the line. We’re both men of the world who know how things are. I want a man killed. You’ve killed a man before, I imagine.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So I want a man killed. I’m told you’re fast and accurate with a gun. I have even been told you’re the best.’

      ‘I like to think so.’

      ‘So you have no objection to killing?’

      ‘I accept the principle that there are times when a man has to be killed.’

      ‘Good. We understand each other.’

      ‘Who do you want killed and how do you want it done?’

      ‘The man is Bob Posset. I want him killed quickly and publicly. It must look like a personal killing. I want nothing to connect you to me. Folks can think what they goddam well like, but they mustn’t be able to prove it. Do I make myself clear?’

      ‘You do. Where is this man now?’

      ‘He’s at the Rancher’s Rest. Room Eight. Do you know him?’

      ‘No. How much are you paying?’

      ‘Five hundred dollars now. The same when the job is done.’ There was a long silence in the room between the two men. Game waited expectantly.

      ‘Well?’ he said.

      Blade said, ‘You’ve come to the wrong man.’ He turned and headed for the door. Game sat still as rock. When Blade had his hand on the door handle, the big man behind the desk said, ‘Wait.’ Blade turned to face him. His face was still expressionless. Game said, ‘What the hell’s gotten into you, man? Isn’t the price high enough?’

      ‘Game,’ said Blade, ‘you don’t have the money to make it high enough.’ He opened the door, went out and shut it quietly behind him.

      Aloud, Game thought, ‘Well I’ll be goddamed.’

      Blade walked through the large house, walked out on to the street and went along it to the first intersection. Tucson was a quiet enough town and a place that Blade liked. It was still half a Mexican town and he had an affinity with his mother’s people. He liked the pungent spicy smells, the soft Mexican sounds, the strings of nodding burros, the women selling tortillas, the Spanish tongue.

      He turned left at the intersection, walked a block and came to the Rancher’s Rest. It was a sprawling two-storied adobe building newly whitewashed. It sparkled in the brilliant sunlight. The girl behind the desk in the lobby sparkled too. She was an Anglo, but Blade didn’t hold that against her. She was so all around lovely nobody in his right mind could hold anything against her. Her smile was as welcoming as her eyes. Blade tried Spanish on her and was not surprised when she replied fluently. Señor Posset was in his room now. Should she show him the way? No, said Blade, but if she would be kind enough to tell him where the room was. Most certainly, she told him. The room was immediately over this lobby. He thanked her and mounted the stairs. Halfway up he turned and she smiled at him. The smile was like a benediction. It made Blade feel better after his interview with Carlton Game.

      He found Room Eight and knocked on the door.

      A man’s voice said, ‘Who is it?’

      ‘My name’s Blade, you don’t know me.’

      ‘Come ahead.’

      Blade opened the door and entered.

      There was a man sitting on the bed. There was a Navy Model Remington 1871 in his hand and it was cocked and pointing at Blade’s belly.

      Blade halted, raised his hands shoulder high and said, ‘I have just come from Carlton Game. He wanted to hire me for a thousand dollars to kill you. I refused. He told me it had been tried three times before.’

      Posset nodded. ‘Lift your gun out with the fingertips of your left hand.’ Blade did so. ‘Now lay it gently on the floor and kick it behind you.’ Blade did so. The man smiled and said, ‘That’s better. Now we can talk.’

      There was one chair in the room. It stood by the window. Blade sat down and took a good look at Posset. He was a man of medium height with a brown wide-awake intelligent face. His hair was going thin, almost to baldness. While he was a man who looked relaxed, there was an alertness about him that was immediately noticeable.

      Posset said, ‘A man comes into my hotel room and tells me he has refused a thousand dollars to kill me. There are a number of possibilities here, my friend. One: he could be lying. He could have accepted the thousand dollars to kill me. Two: he could be telling the truth. If he’s telling the truth, I ask myself why he comes to me at all. If he has said no to Carlton Game, he would get out of town if he has any sense at all.’

      Blade smiled.

      ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘I was curious to see the man Carlton Game had tried to kill three times and failed.’

      ‘I’d be a fool if I trusted you,’ Posset said.

      ‘You think I didn’t think of that?’ Blade said ‘It was plain curiosity that brought me here. Posset. That and the fact that I’m not a hired gun and I thought it right to come and tell you what had passed. If you let me pick up my gun, I’ll go now.’

      Posset rose from the bed, walked around Blade without once taking the sights of his gun from him, picked up the gun on the floor, emptied the bullets on to the bed and handed the weapon butt first to Blade.

      ‘All right,’ Posset said. ‘Go. But don’t forget this Game will know you’ve been here and you will have signed your own death warrant by coming. The way Game’s mind works, it’ll mean you’ve thrown in with me.’

      Blade slipped the gun away into its holster and said, ‘I’m still curious. Why does Game want you dead so badly?’

      Posset looked surprised. ‘You mean you don’t know? You haven’t heard that I have crossed him at every turn. I have become like a maggot in his brain. Thought of me wakes him sweating in the middle of the night. He sent his best man after me. Braced me in public. I killed him with one shot. Then he tried to burn my house down. I paid him for that. I burned his line camp. Can you imagine how the great Carlton Game took that? He bushwhacked me just across the Mexican Border and drove off three hundred steers I was driving up from Mexico to my graze. I killed two of his top men. Next time he put a hired killer on to me. I crippled him. Is that enough for you?’

      Blade said, ‘There just has to be something more. Something that really clinches his hate.’

      Posset laughed genuinely. ‘You’re right. I took his daughter away from him.’

      Blade said, ‘I don’t see her.’

      Posset scowled. ‘Hell, he took her back again. Sent her east and paid some high class dude to marry her.’

      Blade said, ‘You still haven’t explained why all this.’

      ‘I hold the water rights he wants. I hold the winter graze he wants. My range runs right across the best way out of his range. The son-of-a-bitch runs nearly a million head of cattle and he’s still greedy for land.’

      ‘Would it hurt to let him have access to water?’

      ‘You don’t know Game,’ Posset snapped back at him. ‘You give him an inch and he’ll take a mile. Once I let his hordes of cattle and his army of riders in, they’ll swamp me.’

      Blade said, ‘It’s none of my business, but I would have thought you would have been back on your own range. Why come into town at all?’

      ‘Because,’ said Posset, ‘I have riders and they’re human. I paid ’em and they came into town for a few drinks. They found trouble and the city marshal threw ’em in the hoosegow. I’ve come to get ’em out. I owe it to ’em.’

      Blade said, ‘And Game has the marshal in his pocket.’

      ‘That ain’t the first of it,’ said Posset. ‘He has the goddam judge in his pocket.’

      Blade said, ‘You’re right. I’d be a damn fool if I stayed around here. So I’m leaving.’

      Posset nodded. ‘Thanks for coming here. I guess you’re sincere.’

      Blade returned the nod and walked out of the room.

      The lovely girl was still behind the desk in the lobby. Blade had the feeling that she had stayed there to see him as he went out. He touched his hat and smiled as he passed the desk. She said, ‘Mr Blade.’

      Blade swerved in her direction and asked, ‘How did you know my name?’

      ‘My father recognized you. He told me who and what you are.’

      ‘Nothing good, I’ll be bound,’ said Blade gravely.

      She smiled very slightly.

      ‘I’d like to believe that you came here today to help Mr Posset.’

      Blade looked at her curiously. ‘Does he mean something to you?’

      She flushed and looked down at her fingernails. She said, ‘A man doesn’t have to mean something to me for me to not want him hurt.

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